the
feminist
seventies
27 april 2002
The Desired Ironic Gendered Rewritten Imagined 27 April 2002
While the conference will focus particularly on UK and wider European experiences, we also welcome contributions from further afield. What were the feminist seventies? What happened? What was achieved? What was the spirit of the Women’s Liberation Movement? How did class, sexuality, race and dis/ability mediate women’s relationship to ideas of liberation? Was there a provincial, as distinct from a metropolitan, experience? How did the WLM touch women’s lives? What did it mean to be a woman living at the time but not involved? What impact did notions of empowerment and consciousness-raising have on women’s lives? How were television, film and fiction negotiating with WLM ideas? What was the political environment? How did social trends change? What kind of pressures did different women have to face? What sorts of popular culture sum up the seventies zeitgeist?
One strong theme will be a concern with the legacies of ‘the seventies’. How can the seventies be re-read? What role does ‘the seventies’ play in contemporary feminist identities? Who has access to the feminist seventies myth? Is experience privileged? How do older feminists engage with ‘the seventies’? How do women who identified as feminists later in life relate to ‘the seventies’? How do younger feminists relate to ‘the seventies’? What does ‘the seventies’ mean in the context of third wave feminism? What does ‘the seventies’ mean to Women’s Studies? Can ‘the seventies’ offer any way forward for the future of feminism?
Contributions welcome from everyone who would like an opportunity for their work on ‘the seventies’ to be opened up, challenged and developed. If you would like to discuss an idea for a presentation before submitting an abstract, please contact us at the above address. |